July 30, 2026

Bronx, NY – Yesterday, in an effort to curtail the 3-day long strike, The Bronx Defenders returned to the bargaining table and presented a revised proposal that builds on substantial salary and benefit increases already offered across every staff role. The union rejected the proposal and submitted a counterproposal.

Juval O. Scott, Executive Director of The Bronx Defenders, issued the following statement:

“From the beginning of these negotiations, we have proposed increasing pay and benefits for every staff role. That is consistent with our holistic defense model, in which everyone at The Bronx Defenders is essential to providing client-centered, innovative, and relentless advocacy on behalf of the people we represent.

“We heard the union’s concern that creating separate attorney and social work salary scales undervalues social work. We disagree. Separate scales do not reflect different levels of value. We recognize that social work is foundational to holistic defense, and that is why our salary proposal compensates our social workers well above broad regional and public-sector benchmarks.

“Nevertheless, to further demonstrate to our social work staff that they are valued team members and ensure that our social worker salaries remain highly competitive, we increased our wage offer for that role. Our revised proposal raises a social worker’s starting salary to $90,000 and provides an average increase of approximately 6%, or $6,400, across the scale.

“The proposed $90,000 starting salary far exceeds the starting pay advertised for many recent New York City government social work positions, including specialized roles requiring advanced licensure and experience. It is also substantially above the approximately $71,300 annualized mean wage for community and social service occupations in the New York metropolitan area reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Our proposal thus sustains competitive pay for social workers while allowing us to address a different and urgent problem: attorney compensation has fallen too far behind comparable legal work, making it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain the lawyers our clients and defense teams need.

“Equal increases across both roles would not allow us to meaningfully address the attorney recruitment and retention gap. Separating the scales will allow us to strengthen the parts of our holistic defense team facing the greatest strain while increasing compensation for everyone.

“Unfortunately, the union did not accept the proposal, instead countering items previously addressed and introducing new demands. We remain ready to bargain and are committed to reaching an agreement that brings our staff back together and protects the quality of defense the people of the Bronx deserve.”

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